Due to an inferior / incomplete development of my ‘container’ I feel other peoples emotions very powerfully. I experience unowned / unintegrated emotions even more strongly as they aren’t mitigated by conscious awareness. I ‘receive’ these into myself raw; as Sounds and Furies. My skill lies in having refined my innate ability to ‘translate’ these energies into coherent thoughts and feelings. I am a ‘meaning maker’ of other peoples blinding pain. When their fears are made visible they can begin to engage and negotiate with these forces – they can begin to self-heal. When the schism is too great for me to handle – when the emotion is one that I have not yet confronted and accepted as part of my own emotional life – I instinctively shut down to protect myself. I have migraines.

[I like to qualify the type of migraines I have with the original Greek source-word as I feel it better conjures up the notion of a ‘split’.]

Every migraine is thus a painful testament to my emotional incompetence / inexperience. I have no choice: I have to care, I have to decipher, I have to translate.